Quick and easy soft filtering with this Power Retouche Photoshop plugin

Apply the digital equivalent of a lens soft filter in your favorite photo software with this plugin for photoshop and other photo software. The plugin does exactly the same as a traditional lens soft filter. It lets you adjust both the strength and the softness. You can even apply it radialy or as a graduted effect.

Windows version is for all versions of Photoshop, Elements,
Fireworks, Paint Shop Pro, Corel Draw,Illustrator and other software that supports Photoshop plugins. See list.Mac version is for Photoshop CS3 and later and Elements
and is universal only.

Soft Filter Photoshop plugin

Benefitsof the plugin

Create that intimate soft look of traditional lens soft filters Filter out noise Set the filter to any desired strength or effect

Example -

The Soft Filter Photoshop plugin is an exact digital equivalent of the classic
lens soft filters.

The
Soft Filter

Effect

Spread

These
are the main controls.

Effect % determines how strong the soft filter should be.Spread determines the size of the soft haze.

The photo to the right was filtered below at various effect levels,
but with the spread size 10 in all cases. A spread of 10 would normally
be considered too high for such a small image, but for the sake
of illustration it is fine.

Notice the spread and fade-out of the haze in the effect 100% example.
It matches exactly the fade-out and spread of traditional lens soft-filters.

Like the traditional lens soft filters, you can use this filter
to create a romantic and warm mood in the photo or as a noise filter.

Effect 25
Spread 10

Effect 50
Spread 10

Effect 80
Spread 10

Effect 100
Spread 10

Retouch levels

Retouch
levels

The
three slider Lights, Midtones and Darks are common to most Power
Retouche filters and they adjust the level of retouching applied
to the respective brightness levels. In other words with our soft
filter, you can for example soften the lights more than the shadows.

The following three examples illustrate this.

Effect = 100, Spread = 10, but applied solely to either lights,
midtones or darks. In practical use one would combine various amounts
of all three levels, but for the sake of illustration...

Lights only

Midtones only

Darks only

Graduated effect

These
controls are common for many of the Power Retouche plug-ins. Using
graduated effect will cause the filter to apply it's filtering at
full strength in one side of the image and then fade the effect
out towards the other side. You can change direction by right clicking
the preview (Windows) or Ctl-clicking (Mac). Midpoint will shift
the balance between how large an area will be filtered at full strength
and how much will have a faded out effect. Contrast will change
the accelleration and spread of the fade-out. Diffusion will make
the graduated effect slightly irregular so it looks natural; a setting
of 5 is usually best.

In this example we applied a graduated effect towards the bottom,
setting midpoint low. This retouch created a depth-of-field by softening
the foregound. To create a look more of blur than softness, as in
this case, set the effect high and the size low.

Process in tiles

The plug-in has two modes: it can process the entire image in one gulp, or it can process the image in tiles. Processing in tiles is slower, so only use it if your image is larger than the amount of free ram.